


handshake

by wickersnap



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin's terrible Flirting, Feelings Realisation, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Possible Lovers, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27663167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap
Summary: Anakin swings his legs out over the open air of several dozen floors where he sits on the rooftop’s edge. Hundreds of white-and-gold plastoid forms mill about below, but even from so high up he could pick Marshal Commander Cody out of the tide without any effort at all.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	handshake

The hangar clangs with the usual bustle of pilots and mechanics and machinery. Sparks fly from welding joints and plasma torches, chatter rises up from crews on break as they laugh and joke, and Cody hums in satisfaction, making his way between the ranks of pristine fighters. Troops snap to attention as he passes and he waves them all down, idly flicking through notifications on his datapad between greetings and check-ins. Above them, a set of rattling metal grates give a sudden crash and almost smother a low, mischievious giggle.

“Hey Commander!” calls one Anakin Skywalker, dangling upside down from a catwalk by one ankle and looking supremely unconcerned about it. “How’s it hanging?”

Cody stares at him for a long moment. Blinks. “Commander,” he greets.

Skywalker grins and shifts, dropping from his perch with little enough warning that Cody barely keeps himself from lurching forward. He flips in a flutter of tabards and lands effortlessly on his toes, padawan brain slipping over his shoulder. Once more Cody is just slightly irritated to find himself looking up to meet his eyes.

“Everything looks good here to me,” Skywalker says. He turns to continue Cody’s path through the hangar and Cody follows. “My squad are ready to go whenever, just say the word.”

“Very good, sir,” he replies. He knows that already, of course, but it’s always a small comfort to hear so in person.

“It’s  _ Anakin, _ Cody. Please.”

Cody runs his tongue behind his teeth. “I don’t think I can do that, sir.”

Skywalker frowns. “You don’t… I never asked. What would you prefer I call you?”

“Any way you want, sir. I don’t mind.” Skywalker knows it’s a lie, even without the Force, but what he doesn’t know—not that Cody would  _ ever _ tell him—is that from him and the General, Cody would probably put up with just about anything. 

Skywalker gives him a look and he has to turn his gaze back to their path. “…But my name  _ is _ Cody. I appreciate it.” 

“Then  _ mine _ is Anakin. You don’t have to, but—you can. When we’re off duty, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Cody agrees, and can’t help but smile.

Skywalker grins and nudges their shoulders together. “I think you’ve more than earned the right, chasing after me and Master Obi-Wan all the time.”

“Oh, so you know you’re a pain in the shebs, sir?”

The kid—well, they’re the same age really, Cody supposes—nearly trips over his own feet. “This is all a front, isn’t it?” He demands. “If you make sure you’re perfectly polite in everything else you can get away with anything!”

“Only because you make it so easy, sir.”

He doesn’t laugh at Skywalker’s superficial whinging. He watches him pretend to fume and cross his arms and walk backwards so he can face Cody while he talks. The pout though… He’s beginning to see why it causes General Kenobi so much grief.

Once again, the General appears to have misplaced his robe somewhere on the battlefield.  _ And _ the spare Cody had handed him not even an hour ago.  _ And _ the spare Cody had handed the Commander to give to him. And now  _ Skywalker _ is joining in on the gag, smiling beatifically as if he isn’t adding fuel to the fire of Cody’s headache by the day.

“It’s going to get down to freezing temperatures soon, Commander sir,” he sighs. “I told you to keep your robes on!”

“It’s not  _ that _ bad,” Skywalker argues. Cody grits his teeth and startles when Skywalker’s saber flashes a blue streak beside them and reflects the bolt of a lone and half-dead droid right back into its processing core. It bleats a final yelp and crumples right back down to the frosty ground. “We have the Force to draw on for that. Don’t worry, I won’t let Master Obi-Wan freeze.”

“It would be  _ easier, _ sir, if you just kept ahold of your clothes!”

Skywalker laughs. “Where’s the fun in that? I take it you’re yet to serve with Master Fisto.”

“General  _ Fisto _ understands that when he refuses to put his robes on the water on his headtails freezes them solid!”

“You’re getting sloppy, Codes—that one doesn’t even make sense.” Cody’s brain stutters while Skywalker snickers, the face of blonde little Rex grinning up at him drifting across his mind.

“Yes,” he waves off, “well, I just don’t want to have to spend the next night cycle making sure the both of you don’t catch hypothermia.”

“Offering to warm me up yourself?

Cody stares up at the little shit, gaping wordlessly behind his bucket. The Force must take pity on him, he thinks, because before the silence can stretch too long he’s saved from having to respond by the General’s calling for them faintly in the distance. 

If he’s lost his comm unit again, Cody is going to static tape the damned thing to his face.

He doesn’t realise he’s staring until Skywalker catches him at it.

They’re sitting on the wrong side of a cave-in, a junior scout called Boil from his own Ghost Company crouched watchfully near the debris site, and Cody may or may not be bleeding out. He doesn’t really know, it’s all gone a bit… funny. He does know, however, that Skywalker is knelt by his side in some sort of meditation, holding his hands out over Cody’s crushed armour. Something warm feels like it’s crawling over his skin, but his attention’s been well and truly caught by the torn shoulder of Skywalker’s tunics. 

There’s a superficial cut that’s bled dark into the brown linen. Cody looks it over for a moment before deciding it’s probably okay, but just below it, half hidden by dust and grime and blood, is a short, thick, vertical white scar half faded against his tanned skin. It looks old. Maybe as old as some of General Kenobi’s injuries from his padawan days.

“It’s fine, Cody,” Skywalker mutters. “The blood’s drying already. Yours, however…”

“Not that,” Cody murmurs, frowning. He lifts a numb arm in an attempt to trace shaking fingers down the mark. He’s already too out of it to stop himself.

Skywalker’s mouth quirks a little at the corner, and he cracks an eye open to look at Cody. “That one? That was where they cut the detonator out of my arm when I was nine.”

Cody freezes. The hand hovering over Skywalker’s arm hits the ground elbow-first at the same moment something hot and sharp wrenches in Cody’s gut before leaching slowly away. Cody gasps reedy snatches of air and tries to unclench his body muscle by muscle.

_ My name is Cody. _

Skywalker exhales slowly and allows his hands to fall back to his sides, no longer watching Cody’s wound like it might attack him too.

_ You don’t have to, but— _

“Anakin,” he says, and when he takes his next breath the movement comes easier. “Thank you.”

Anakin lights up beneath the slight tremble of exertion Cody is now accustomed to looking out for in his Jetiise. His grin is wide but soft, just like the slowly growing strands of hair that curl around his ears. Cody thinks he smiles back, remembers the cracking of his lips as they moved, but doesn’t know anything that happened after that.

“And you know—” Rex says, pausing to take a drink of his beer, “—Cody told me all these stories before we shipped out to meet you. Said you were so excitable, ‘a menace to productivity,’ he said, and that you used to use the Force in ways that would make Kenobi cry if he knew, just to mess with him.”

At the head of the table Padmé Amidala snorts and ducks behind her hands to hide a snicker. Cody frowns a little and kicks Rex under the table, but he only grins wider. 

“So we get there, and there’s the General walking up the ramp, and I’m thinking,  _ what the hell are we in for now? _ But even after we’d settled in I was waiting for what Cody said to start and… Nothing. I’d been beginning to think he’d said it to kriff with me until we joined up again with the two-twelfth.”

Tano is outright laughing now, but Amidala has recovered enough that her only tells are her soft smile and the bright gleam in her eyes. “And what happened then?” she asks.

Opposite Cody, Anakin has stopped eating and is growing progressively redder by the word.

“Well, as soon as the formal bits were done he just went right up to Cody and started chatting away like they were best friends. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be doing so I had to stand there and listen, and yeah, I guess it started making sense after that.”

“Most of what Anakin says that he considers idle chatter is rubbish, Rex, you must know that by now,” Obi-Wan chuckles.

“Hey!” protests Tano, wiping tears from her eyes. “Sometimes he talks about ships too.”

Cody can feel Wolffe’s eyes on the side of his head from farther down the table. He has Knight Offee, Gree and Master Unduli as an unwitting barrier between them, but that unfortunately doesn’t mean the bastard’s gone miraculously deaf; any chance to get dirt on Cody he’ll more than jump at.

“…And when we had to stop on Scarif for repairs, he really was an absolute nightmare,” Obi-Wan is saying. “I seem to remember there was a lot of complaining about sand.”

“Something about how it gets everywhere, and that it always shifts from under your feet,” Cody agrees. “He was very adamant about it.” 

Amidala excuses herself to turn away to laugh. Tano is practically under the table, and Rex and Obi-Wan are both looking very pleased with themselves.

“All that time spent with the Master Negotiator,” Offee says innocently to Anakin, who’s staring very fixedly at the floor by his feet. “All those times you complained about to me,  _ at length, _ and still you never learned to flirt like a normal human being.”

Anakin makes a high, wounded noise. For a second the table is quiet enough to hear Cody’s fork clatter to his plate, loud and clear—that is until everyone around them explodes into laughter. Rex toasts him from his place at Anakin’s side, ducking Tano’s hearty punch to the shoulder and Anakin’s betrayed, red-faced glare. Cody can hear all their other brothers heckling, from Fox sitting next to Amidala to Ponds all the way down at the end with Master Windu. He’s never going to hear the end of this in his  _ life. _

It’s Obi-Wan’s other senator friend Organa that Cody has to thank for eventually changing the subject, giving him the breathing space he needs to stop having to pretend to hide in his drink. Anakin’s still glaring at the tablecloth, fiddling his napkin between his fingers, and ever so carefully Cody nudges a foot up against the instep of one of his beneath the table.

Anakin looks up at him, his eyes wide, and Cody tries for a small smile. Something that says  _ it’s okay, _ or even  _ I don’t mind,  _ and _ maybe I thought it was cute. _ Anakin bites his lip and looks away again, this time smiling too, and Cody thinks, maybe, that the feeling he gets when his old co-commander looks at him is one he’s grown too used to to want to lose.

He remembers, suddenly, the beautiful walkway through the Lower Sky Gardens not too far from Amidala’s apartments that he heard about from Bly. Maybe, once they’ve said their goodnights, he could show it to Anakin, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang with me over on [tumblr!](https://silverxsakura.tumblr.com/)


End file.
